Heights of Heartbreak

“You shall love your G-d with all your heart.” (Devarim 6:5, The Shema). “You shall not wander after your hearts and after your eyes after which you are going astray.” (Numbers 15:39, The Shema)

Her name was Laura. We worked together for 2 years. We spent a lot of time together talking, laughing, and getting to know each other. She saw a side of me I felt nobody ever saw. It was a good part of me that I wasn’t afraid to reveal to her. She showered me with affection. Always a hug when we started work. Usually a kiss on the cheek before we left.

I was in love.

After a couple of months I could think of nothing but her. Every time we hugged I was filled with energy. It felt like food to a starving man. Every moment near her became as vital to me as oxygen.

There were only a few problems: She was 23 and I was 16. I was Jewish and she was not. She saw a friendship in me where I saw so much more.

The day came when I had to confront the obvious reality: What I wanted so badly was not ever going to happen. It was devastating. I never knew pain like that. It took a while to recover. When it comes to the first love of your life, it takes some time to heal the wound.

I think about that difficult time a lot these days. Even if my head knew better, I still wanted her. It didn’t matter that I was just about to go to college and embark on a whole new world of opportunity – I wanted her. It didn’t matter that I was squandering years of my real life dreaming a senseless fantasy – I wanted her. It didn’t matter that I was seriously embarrassing myself by not letting go – I wanted her.

In the end I had to will my heart away and move on. I had to stare this insatiable desire in the face and become unfazed by it. I was yearning for something Hashem forbids. I cannot have it because Hashem doesn’t want it. Period.

Many of us have had the same experience. There was something in your life you wanted so bad it was all you could think about, from the moment you woke up to right before falling asleep. It could be a woman, a job, respect from a parent, some type of success, the right home, or inclusion in the most exclusive “members only” club. It could even be a desire for a person of the same gender. We all have that deeply passionate obsession that can only "come from the heart."

We want it so much that if we don't have it, it feels like a piece of our own flesh has been torn away.

This is the Divine service of the broken heart. It is one of the most difficult, and yet amazing ways to serve Hashem. On a spiritual level, few things are higher than a broken heart. To use it in the service of Hashem requires you to strengthen your determination and bolster your faith.

There come times in our life when we have to confront not an enemy, but something inside us that feels right from the deepest places. We have to endure this stubborn feeling that if we have this, we are complete. We have to accept it, and at the same time disregard it.

It’s not easy. This feeling doesn’t come and go like a bad salesman. It is always there. It amplifies. It takes over all of our logic, commandeering our thoughts and hijacking our dreams. We become the desire itself, seeing good and bad as nothing but a mere measure of how far we have fulfilled it.

When this desire, any desire, reaches this crescendo, it comes from a very bad place and it has to go.

To serve Hashem we have to literally cut our heart out. We must resist the high of these fleeting menageries time and time again, thousands of battles each and every day over months, years, even an entire lifetime.

This is how we turn what’s left of our heart to G-d. In resisting these emotions, and building our resistance to the intensity of the desires we create a love for Hashem that is impenetrable. It is stronger than anything we have ever known. By resisting the obsession we are cutting a piece of our heart out. Then replacing it with a new passion for He Who knows what’s best for us.

This is the determination we build up to serve Hashem. It is a fierce power that comes from fighting what has become spiritual cancer – a force within us trying to destroy us.

The faith comes in knowing that there is something better at the end. Even better than the “nirvana” we are working to distance ourselves from.

Boy is that easier said than done.

To even entertain such a notion is an act of pure and absolute faith. Why absolute? Because when we are consumed by this desire we are totally blind. In tossing it aside for what, at the moment, sounds like empty words is an act of true faith.

The faith becomes a sweeter reality as we inch away from this albatross and towards the next step in the journey Hashem sets out for us. In some cases the sweeter reality comes in the Next World, where we are unchained from our desires in this one and all that is left before G-d is the new heart we mended for Him.

In many situations the dream dissipates and we move on to the next step, to empower ourselves with a massive amount of emuna and determination to really crush life’s next challenge.

Time is running out on this age of lust. Pretty soon it will all be over and these passions will be recalled as a bad joke. Before the vault closes and the gems are locked up forever, do something!

Do anything that you can!